Download or read book Forging American Communism written by Edward P. Johanningsmeier and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major figure in the history of twentieth-century American radicalism, William Z. Foster (1881-1961) fought his way out of the slums of turn-of-the-century Philadelphia to become a professional revolutionary as well as a notorious and feared labor agitator. Drawing on private family papers, FBI files, and recently opened Russian archives, this first full-scale biography traces Foster's early life as a world traveler, railroad worker, seaman, hobo, union activist, and radical journalist, and also probes the origins and implications of his ill-fated career as a top-echelon Communist official and three-time presidential candidate. Even though Foster's long and eventful life ended in Moscow, where he was given a state funeral in Red Square, he was, as portrayed here, a thoroughly American radical. The book not only reveals the circumstances of Foster's poverty-stricken childhood in Philadelphia, but also vividly describes his work and travels in the American West. Also included are fascinating accounts of his early political career as a Socialist, "Wobbly," and anarcho-syndicalist, and of his activities as the architect of giant organizing campaigns by the American Federation of Labor, involving hundreds of thousands of workers in the meatpacking and steel industries. The author views Foster's influence in the American Communist movement from the perspective of the history of American labor and unionism, but he also offers a realistic assessment of Foster's career in light of factional intrigues at the highest levels of the Communist International. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Download or read book The Forging of Finnish American Communism 1917 1924 written by Auvo Kostiainen and published by Turku : Turin Yliopisto. This book was released on 1978 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Forging of Finnish American Communism written by Auvo Kostiainen and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book American Communism in Crisis 1943 1957 written by Joseph Robert Starobin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1975-01-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Roots of American Communism written by and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In his special, prescient way, Theodore Draper himself had the final words on American Communism: "It is like a museum of radical politics. In its various stages, it has virtually been all things to all men ... There are many ways of trying to understand such a movement, but the first task is historical. In some respects, there is no other way to understand it, or at least to avoid seriously misunderstanding it. Every other approach tends to be static, one-sided or unbalanced."" "Draper correctly notes that the formative period of the American Communist movement has remained a largely untold and even unknown story. In part, the reasons for this are that the Communist movement, although a child of the West, grew to power in the Soviet East. But Draper rescues this chapter with deep appreciation for the fact that communism was not something that happened just in Russia, but also in the United States. This is a must read for scholars and laypersons alike."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book American Communism and Soviet Russia written by Theodore Draper and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This companion volume to The Roots of American Communism brings to completion what the author describes as the essence of the relationship of American Communism to Soviet Russia in the fi rst decade after the Bolsheviks seized power. The outpouring of new archive materials makes it plain that Draper's premise is direct and to the point: The communist movement "was transformed from a new expression of American radicalism to the American appendage of a Russian revolutionary power." Each generation must fi nd this out for itself, and no better guide exists than the work of master historian Theodore Draper. American Communism and Soviet Russia is acknowledged to be the classic, authoritative history of the critical formative period of the American Communist Party. Based on confi dential minutes of the top party committees, interviews with party leaders, and public records, this book carefully documents the infl uence of the Soviet Union on the fundamental nature of American Communism. Draper's refl ections on that period in this edition are a fi tting capstone to this pioneering effort. Daniel Bell, in Saturday Review, remarked about this work that "there are surprisingly few scholarly histories of individual Communist parties and even fewer which treat of this crucial decade in intimate detail. Draper's account is therefore of great importance." Arthur M. Schlesinger, in The New York Times Book Review, says that "in reading Draper's closely packed pages, one hardly knows whether to marvel more at the detachment with which he examines the Communist movement, the patience with which he unravels the dreary and intricate struggles for power among the top leaders, or the intelligence with which he analyzes the interplay of factors determining the development of American Communism." And Michael Harrington, in Commonweal, asserted that Draper's book "will long be a defi nitive source volume and analysis of the Stalinization of American Communism."
Download or read book Sojourning for Freedom written by Erik S. McDuffie and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illuminates a pathbreaking black radical feminist politics forged by black women leftists active in the U.S. Communist Party between its founding in 1919 and its demise in the 1950s.
Download or read book Reds written by Maurice Isserman and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive history of the Communist Party USA, revealing how its members contributed to struggles for justice and equality in America even as they championed a brutal, totalitarian state, the USSR After generations in the shadows, socialism is making headlines in the United States, following the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns and the election of several democratic socialists to Congress. Today’s leftists hail from a long lineage of anti-capitalist activists in the United States, yet the true legacy and lessons of their most radical and controversial forebears, the American Communists, remain little understood. In Reds, historian Maurice Isserman focuses on the deeply contradictory nature of the history of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), a movement that attracted egalitarian idealists and bred authoritarian zealots. Founded in 1919, the CPUSA fought for a just society in America: members organized powerful industrial unions, protested racism, and moved the nation left. At the same time, Communists maintained unwavering faith in the USSR’s claims to be a democratic workers’ state and came to be regarded as agents of a hostile foreign power. Following Nikita Khrushchev’s revelation of Joseph Stalin’s crimes, however, doubt in Soviet leadership erupted within the CPUSA, leading to the organization’s decline into political irrelevance. This is the balanced and definitive account of an essential chapter in the history of radical politics in the United States.
Download or read book American Communism written by James Oneal and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Many Worlds of American Communism written by Joshua Morris and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-09-08 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the multifaceted dimensions that make up the American communist movement from its early years in the 1920s to its peak in the years leading up to World War II. The author argues that in order to effectively understand a social movement, it is necessary to take an approach that differentiates between the political-, social-, and labor-oriented motivations taken by the movement's participants. By exploring the political, community, and labor dimensions of American communism, the author helps convey the complex nature of social movements and the various ways they attempted to create agency in their society.
Download or read book The Romance of American Communism written by Vivian Gornick and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writer and critic Vivian Gornick’s long-unavailable classic exploring how Left politics gave depth and meaning to American life “Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class.” So begins Vivian Gornick’s exploration of how the world of socialists, communists, and progressives in the 1940s and 1950s created a rich, diverse world where ordinary men and women felt their lives connected to a larger human project. Now back in print after its initial publication in 1977 and with a new introduction by the author, The Romance of American Communism is a landmark work of new journalism, profiling American Communist Party members and fellow travelers as they joined the Party, lived within its orbit, and left in disillusionment and disappointment as Stalin’s crimes became public.
Download or read book The Soviet World of American Communism written by Harvey Klehr and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Secret World of American Communism (1995), filled with revelations about Communist party covert operations in the United States, created an international sensation. Now the American authors of that book, along with Soviet archivist Kyrill M. Anderson, offer a second volume of profound social, political, and historical importance. Based on documents newly available from Russian archives, The Soviet World of American Communism conclusively demonstrates the continuous and intimate ties between the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) and Moscow. In a meticulous investigation of the personal, organizational, and financial links between the CPUSA and Soviet Communists, the authors find that Moscow maintained extensive control of the CPUSA, even of the American rank and file. The widely accepted view that the CPUSA was essentially an idealistic organization devoted to the pursuit of social justice must be radically revised, say the authors. Although individuals within the organization may not have been aware of Moscow’s influence, the leaders of the organization most definitely were. The authors explain and annotate ninety-five documents, reproduced here in their entirety or in large part, and they quote from hundreds of others to reveal the actual workings of the American Communist party. They show that: • the USSR covertly provided a large part of the CPUSA budget from the early 1920s to the end of the 1980s; • Moscow issued orders, which the CPUSA obeyed, on issues ranging from what political decisions the American party should make to who should serve in the party leadership; • the CPUSA endorsed Stalin’s purges and the persecution of Americans living in Russia.
Download or read book I Confess written by Benjamin Gitlow and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1940, American socialist-turned-conservatist politician Benjamin Gitlow first published this work of political autobiography, I Confess: The Truth About American Communism. The book proved to be controversial and widely noticed, pushing Gitlow into the public eye as a leading opponent of American Communism. To this day, it remains an important primary document for the study of American Communism in the 1920s and 1930s. “This book is a faithful and, resolutely candid account from the inside—and what is more important, from the top—of a vital phase of recent American history. The history is secret, and might well have remained so but for the extraordinary poise and courage of this man, Ben Gitlow, and his ultimate recovery of clear vision and unmixed devotion to his ideals.”—Max Eastman, Introduction
Download or read book The First Ten Years of American Communism written by James Patrick Cannon and published by New York : Pathfinder Press. This book was released on 1973 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the early years of the U.S. communist movement, by a founding leader
Download or read book Earl Browder written by James Gilbert Ryan and published by University Alabama Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the political history of a 20th-century Communist part leader in the US Earl Browder, the preeminent 20th-century Communist party leader in the United States, steered the CPUSA through the critical years of the Great Depression and World War II. A Kansas native and veteran of numerous radical movements, he was peculiarly fitted by circumstance and temperament to head the cause during its heyday. Serving as a bridge between American Communism's secret and public worlds, Browder did more than anyone to attempt to explain the Soviet Union's shifting policies to the American people in a way that would serve the interests of the CPUSA. A proud and loyal follower of Joseph Stalin, Browder nevertheless sought to move the party into the U.S. political mainstream. He used his knowledge of domestic politics to persuade the Communist International to modify Popular Front (1935-1939) tactics for the United States. Despite his rise in the hierarchy, he possessed an independent streak that ultimately proved his undoing. Imprisonment as he neared age 50 left permanent psychological damage. After being released with the approval of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Browder lost his perspective and began entertaining delusions of grandeur about his status in American politics and in the world Communist movement. Still, he could never quite bring legitimacy to the CPUSA because he lacked the vision and moral courage to separate himself totally from the Soviet Union. Ryan concludes that Browder was not so much insincere as deluded. His failure contributed to the demise of the popularity of the Communist party in the United States. In preparation for this book, the author consulted the Browder Papers at Syracuse University and U.S. Government documents, particularly the F.B.I. files. In addition, he traveled to Russia for research in the Soviet Archives when recently opened to Western scholars, including the records of the former Communist International and a collection of American Communist party files, 1919-1944, shipped secretly to Moscow long ago. Indeed, until 1992, the existence of the CPUSA collection was only rumored.
Download or read book Communism in America written by Albert Fried and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: And overview -- The 1920s: birth, insurgency, retrenchment -- Militancy and combat: third period communism, 1929-1934 -- The popular front against fascism, 1935-1945 -- Cold War and demise, 1945--
Download or read book Post Cold War Revelations and the American Communist Party written by Vernon L. Pedersen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all the 'third party' movements in American history, none have been as controversial as the Communist Party of the United States of America. Although denounced as a tool of the Soviet Union, accused of espionage and charged with advocating the revolutionary overthrow of the American government, before WWII it had been an accepted part of the political landscape. This collection offers an intriguing insight into this controversial political party in light of the Moscow archives that were made accessible after the end of the Cold War. This collection of original essays explores new aspects in the history of American Communism, drawing on a range of documents from Moscow and Eastern Europe. Examining traditional subjects in the light of new evidence, the essays cover a range of topics including party leaders, espionage, campaigns against racism, the Spanish Civil War, communism and gender, the fate of members after the McCarthy era and ways in which Communists became Anti-Communists.
